Abstractions of a Paradigm

October 9, 2008

It was an initial interest in how colonialists brought plague rats to the new world that led Yoell to start thinking about infringing ideologies. When he moved to Hawaii he started seeing these ideologies working all around him, such as the great Pacific garbage patch—an enormous body of flotsam trapped by the North Pacific Gyre. “My work is just trying to make sense of it all,” he says.

The series also ties together Yoell’s passion for tourist trinkets, which he started collecting when he worked in the Bahamas years ago. Finding the same Chinese-made plastic ornaments in Hawaii, Yoell decided to play with the idea of whether paradise is a personal idea or a manufactured thing.

Inspired by zombie movies and director David Lynch, Yoell treats his subject with a degree of clinical and somewhat science fiction mentality while finding humour in the confusion he’s examining. For the drawing “It’s in You,” Yoell transformed a famous Gatorade advertisement and made Michael Jordan a zombie. And in “Cold, Pink and Alone,” a raging pink Hulk is juxtaposed to dandelion spores.

“We’re bombarded by images from media. You become almost stoned to it. The biggest thing is when you actually see these things—like the trash, a dead baby albatross, or the port where Columbus’ ship left— and make these connections there’s something that resonates from that.”

Abstractions of a Paradigm will be on display from Fri October 10 – Sat November 8 at Windsor, Ontario’s Artcite.